Saturday, September 24, 2005

For those of you who are trying and are in this process you know what I mean about the testing. Now for those who aren't on this journey like me let me give you a peak into the madness.

It all begins with that first meeting with the doc. We start making a plan. Of course he wants you to start charting. Charting is when you get your lovely thermometer and take your nice temperature before you get your butt out of bed or move too much. It sounds easy but oh no, it is maddening. I am one who has to pee in the night. There is no way I can hold it. So you need a temperature after 4 hours of sleep. That is hard to get sometimes. NOW you may ask, what do you do with that temperature? If you are like me you start the old fashioned you... you chart on paper as your temperature goes up and down. You want to see if and when you ovulate, your temp will spike up and stay up for 3 days when you do O. It all sounds so easy but that chart doesn't always agree with you. It goes all over the place. Man is it ever frustrating. It even becomes stressful and makes you go crazy. Hopefully as you chart for those 3 months you find a good computer program on the web that can help you keep from cheating on that paper. How crazy you become when you start moving that dot of temperature to the place you want it to go. BAD but it does happen!

Along with the charting you do some blood work to check out your levels and thyroid. I am sure a few other things but I didn't bother to ask. All I wanted was a tiny answer, nothing too big. I got a call from the nurse after my bloodwork. She said that they found a problem. Of course I am on my cell phone with her on my way home from work. I had to pull into a gas station because I just knew that some how that little problem was HUGE! My thyroid was off. I needed additional bloodwork done from an endocrinologist. SCARY is all I thought. So my testing journey moved me onto another doctor who took more blood and asked more questions. I was put on a drug to balance that out. I was so excited! This was my answer. Of course this was 2 years ago. Not the answer I was hoping for.

During my first round of testing my husband had to do his own. He had to go 'jerky lurky' in a closet with lovely magazines. We were hoping for a good count. I offered to help but he wanted to do it on his own. The results came back and they needed another test! I laughed. So bad of me. The next test showed that there was a small problem. We thought that was the reason. He was sent to another doctor to see or feel what could be wrong. All of that ended up with 'all is fine, we both just have a small problem and need to do the do everyday'! Whatever to that!

Since all of that turned up nothing we moved on to me having an hsg. Of course I don't know what those letters mean. I could look it up but it isn't important to me. But here is how it all works... You go to a radiological and they check out your tubing. You get undressed, put on the paper gown, lay on the cold table that doesn't have stirrups, listen to the doctor tell you how they haven't done many of these, open up, clench the air as the doc puts in the small spaghetti sized tube into your cervix with a little balloon at the end, then move up the table with something up in you. I have to stop there since my tube popped out and the day got very unhappy with me. Yeah like I popped it out on purpose! So we start all over again, then the dye. Man the dye hurts like crazy! CRAMP CRAMP CRAMP city! Not only does it hurt but you have to roll over on each side and watch the dye run through your tubes. MY TUBES WERE CLEAR! That is what I wanted to hear. Now you have to get off the table walk to the bathroom while the dye runs out and you get to put the world's largest pad on and walk out of the office trying not to let the world know you are wearing a diaper.

Now what do you do when all the tests are clear? What is the problem? Well I was overwhelmed and took a break. It also didn't help that my husband was not around much and doing the do on the right time seemed impossible.

The next step was the final test, a laparoscopy. They put you under and put a scope through your belly while filling it full of air. They also put a 'probe' in (you like my technical talk) on one side of your belly. I had 3 probes and one in my hoohoo! This process can take up to 1 1/2 hours or just 30 minutes. Mine was the full time. The doc takes pictures of your insides as he tries to remove any 'bad stuff'. Well I had bad stuff for sure! I had endometriosis everywhere. The worse case he had ever seen. He shares this with my family as I try to wake up. As I am waking up I am HURTING like I had sex with an elephant. Of course I yell that a few times that day to whoever would listen. The recovery is a lot longer than I had planned but it gave me time to be taken care of by my mom and feel super loved.

Now with the discovery of the problem the testing stops and the treatment begins. The testing journey can be different for each person. Some doctors do the bloodwork and then move on to treatment and drugs. I am glad mine kept testing even though it was painful each step of the way.